Field of Invention
The present invention generally relates to data migration. More specifically, the present invention relates to determining mail archive ownership.
Description of the Related Art
Data migration can be viewed as a process for transferring data between one or more computer systems and storage devices. Data migration may be performed for several reasons including providing backup copy of the data and consolidating data over different systems and devices into one central location. Data migration may also be performed to provide information from one computer system to a new computer system so that the new computer system also has access to the migrated data.
Generally, data migration is performed through the use of a processor and corresponding data migration software run on the processor. The data migration software allows the data migration to be performed in an automated fashion. To achieve an effective data migration, the data migration software also maps between locations where the data is originally stored (e.g., a source system) and where the data will be written (e.g., a target system). The data migration software further evaluates the format of the data being extracted from its original storage location (e.g., the source system) and a requested format of the data corresponding to the location where the data will be written to (e.g., the target system).
One type of data that may be migrated are personal storage table (PST) data. PSTs correspond to an archived version of electronic mail (e-mail) that is stored locally on a user computing device (e.g., laptop, desktop). With the computing device, ownership of the PST may be clear. For example, the PST data on the computing device may be labeled with the owner of the computing device or associated with a particular mailbox. There may be situations where this PST data may be migrated from one location (e.g., source system) to a new location (e.g., target system). For example, the owner would like to have access to the emails stored in one computing device on other computing devices.
There may be situations, however, where the chain of ownership for the PST data may not be clear or may be lost during data migration. In one situation, it is possible that ownership of the PST data can be modified during data migration. For example, an administrator (an individual other than the original owner of the PST data) can become the current owner of the archived data when the PST data is stored (temporarily or long term) in a device (e.g., storage device, computing device) associated with the administrator. Given that a plurality of the PST data can be migrated and stored within the same space (e.g., storage device), differentiating which PST belong to which original owner may be difficult.
It is desired that a method for determining who the original owner for a particular PST data be provided. The PST data, although temporarily controlled by an administrator, may be migrated to another device associated with the original owner. As noted above, the user (e.g., original owner) may wish to migrate PST data associated with one email account on one device to a different email account on a different device. Therefore, determining who the owner is of the PST may be necessary to ensure that the correct PST data is provided to the correct owner on the new device through the use of data migration.